Metasphere Creation

Metasphere is a term I came up with to describe conditions and feelings I felt or sensed in situations particularly dialogue settings while researching my dissertation topic on Community Conversations. 

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The understanding of 'room' or space or interactive atmospheres as a distinctive kind of 'mood' or 'situation' has become a focal point for emerging interest in 'affective atmospheres'. [Gandy, Matthew (2017). "Urban atmospheres". Cultural Geographies. 24 (3): 353–374. Retrieved 2022-02-21]

 

Thus the word itself as an 'atmosphere' can simultaneously evoke both a body of air, or even simply space, along with its prevailing affective characteristics. ... space and subjectivity. The meaning can oscillate between, for example, the latent atmosphere of a room or the complex interplay between multiple subjects in crowd-like situations. For this reason, I have argued that we indeed need a new terminology because it is important to understand elements that qualify social atmosphere.

 

In architecture, spatial design, literary theory, and film theory there is a word called affective atmosphere (colloquially called atmosphere) refers to the mood, situation, or sensorial qualities of a space. [Gandy, Matthew (2017). "Urban atmospheres". Cultural Geographies. 24 (3): 353–374. Retrieved 2022-02-21] Spaces containing atmosphere are shaped through subjective and intersubjective interactions with the qualia of the architecture. 

 

I find defining and using the word Metasphere over the generic weather related word atmosphere (or projected affect) is better linked with ideas in anthropology, architectural theory, critical theory, cultural geography, phenomenology of architecture, and pragmatism. [Mead, George Herbert (2015) [1934]. Mind, Self & Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 166, 184]

 

As early as 1998, for example, the German philosopher Jens Soentgen refers to an 'atmospheric turn' within European phenomenology and reference to 'affective atmospheres' has become more frequent within fields such as anthropology, architectural theory, and cultural geography. ... [Ben] Anderson acknowledges that we are dealing with an 'odd archive' comprising a heterogeneous array of perspectives drawn from disparate fields such as anthropology, critical theory, phenomenology, and other disciplines. [Cultural Geographies Vol. 24, No. 3 (July 2017), pp. 353-374 (22 pages) Published By: Sage Publications, Inc. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26168827]